March 9, 2017

House unanimously approves ethics commission proposal

The New Mexico House of Representatives on Thursday night agreed to give voters a chance to establish a state ethics commission through amending the constitution.

The House voted 66-0 to pass House Joint Resolution 8, sponsored by Rep. Jim Dines, R-Albuquerque.

But the measure faces a harder time in the Senate, which despite a string of state government scandals in the past decade, has been the traditional burial ground for ethics legislation.

Under Dines’ proposal, a seven-member commission would be appointed by the governor and the Legislature to investigate possible ethical violations by legislators, state officers and executive branch officials. The proposed body also would investigate alleged violations of campaign finance laws, laws covering lobbyists and disclosure requirements for state contractors. Five commissioners would have to concur on any decision.

House Republican Leader Nate Gentry, R-Albuquerque, said the structure of the commission is designed to keep politics out. “No one person — the governor, the Legislature — will be able to control it,” he said.

Gentry also said the fact that the commission would have subpoena power means the body would have teeth.

House Speaker Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, also praised the resolution. “This meets the test of bi-partisan. … This is how this type of legislation should be done.”

The commission would not investigate anonymous complaints. Complaints would be published online as soon as the person accused of a violation submits a response. The complaint and the response would be published side by side.

The panel would have the power to dismiss complaints deemed frivolous. But the body would have to make public complaints that have been dismissed without a hearing and the reason for that dismissal.

The body would be authorized to issue advisory opinions about ethical issues raised by state officials.

Last year, by a vote of 50-10, the House passed a similar proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by Dines.

However, that joint resolution met its end in the Senate Rules Committee. After Dines saw proposed changes to his legislation that the committee appeared ready to make, he pulled his own measure, saying the proposal would have become “a toothless tiger.”

The state Senate narrowly approved a bill Thursday that would require just about anyone buying a firearm to undergo a background check. This legislation has been a priority for gun control advocates, but all 16 Republicans and four Democrats in the Senate said it would not prevent the sort of mass shootings that have spurred calls for such laws.

The 60-day legislative session ended Saturday with a down-to-the-wire agreement on a sweeping tax bill that will raise rates on e-cigarettes and new vehicles while nearly doubling an income tax credit for some families. The scaled-back version of House Bill 6 approved by the Senate in the last 20 minutes before the final bang of the gavel was a fitting end to a session dominated for better or worse by the state’s financial outlook.

A state senator has proposed to keep much of the New Mexico ethics commission's work secret and potentially impose thousands of dollars in fines and even jail time on anyone who breaks its confidentiality rules. Seventy-five percent of voters in last year's election approved the creation of a state ethics commission, and legislators are now debating exactly how it should work, including how much the public should know about the cases it handles.

Holtec International was in the news last month when the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied requests from some groups to hold an additional hearing over the company’s license to build an interim storage site in southeastern New Mexico to hold nuclear waste from commercial power plants.